Victorian home back to its beauty

You can see this grand Victorian dame in person on the Cabbagetown Tour of Homes, taking place Sept. 18

The back view of the beautifully restored Victorian home of Janet Wicks and Lory Brouillette. Each year, the Cabbagetown BIA organizes a tour showcasing sophisticated houses in the area.

Photograph by: Glenn Lowson
, National Post

For those with a yen for yesteryear, Cabbagetown holds special sway. Narrow, tree-lined streetscapes, fragrant gardens and whimsical architecture on century homes in a range of styles can be found in this special east-end neighbourhood.

"Some people leave, but many return, and when a house comes to market it's snapped up in a day or two," says Janet Wicks, who with her life partner, Lory Brouillette, were once Cabbagetown folks, then moved to another part of the city. Today they own an exquisite three-storey Victorian in the heart of Cabbagetown. "We're back to stay," Ms. Wicks says of the home at 270 Carlton St., which is open to the public as part of the Cabbagetown Tour of Homes, on Sept. 18 (for more information, visit cabbagetownpa.ca). The home is so impressive, it won the 2011 Peggy Kurtin Award for excellence in Restoration from the Cabbagetown Preservation Association.

The couple purchased the house three years ago, planning to do minor renvations. As is often the case in these instances, their plan led to a complete gut and reno. "The original details of the house had been pretty much removed over the years and the interiors were separated into rental rooms and flats," says Ms. Wicks, cofounder of Janick Electric, an electrical systems design/build firm. "Returning the house to its former beauty has been our goal and passion."

The couple's first challenge was to find a contractor who could deliver the quality of workmanship needed to restore an 1890s house. That entailed recreating not just the period's architectural grandeur, but also mixing it with modern amenities. "We found that team in J.S.A. Candido," says Ms. Brouillette, an artist and photographer.

The couple wanted (and got) a theatre room, sound systems, intercoms, lighting controls, in-house sprinklers and an electric gate opening to the driveway. For added comfort, they also installed under-floor heating in the basement, kitchen, throughout the third floor and bathrooms.

But first they had to contend with structural issues. The contracting firm built reinforced walls to allow for the addition of two soaring conservatories and a rooftop hot tub area. To reduce energy consumption, double-hung windows were installed. These windows open at the top and bottom to create a cross flow which cools off the house naturally.

The conservatories - one is a breakfast area adjacent to the kitchen, the other is accessed off the third-floor master bedroom - required the expertise of conservatory designer Christopher Wallace of Mayfair Conservatories. The peaked, glassroofed structures, which has added 400 square feet of living area to the home (for a total of 3,500 sq. ft.), are fully windowed on three sides, affording streams of natural light to flow within. A further enhancement is a stained glass ceiling above the third-floor staircase.

"Over 100 lighting fixtures, either original or Victorian reproductions that we've been collecting over the years, also brighten the interiors," Ms. Brouillette says.

Most of the lighting is controlled by an automated Vantage system that cues the lights for incremental light changes. Gaslights on the outside of the house are preset on/off. Exterior landscape lighting is designed with LED technology operating on low wattage.

"A lot of the older homes were built with solid brick masonry and lime-based mortar," explains Ms. Wicks. "Engineers designed appropriate insulation factors for our home so as to not creating a problem during the freeze/thaw periods of the year."

To accommodate new eightfoot-high ceilings in the basement, the ground was dug down 44 inches. That also carved out a spacious home theatre room with sound-proofed walls using "quiet rock" drywall. A remotecontrolled, nine-foot-wide projector screen is perfect for watching films, and when retracted into the ceiling there's a 65-inch, 3-D plasma TV behind it built into the wall.

Quebec interior designer Gail Rodgers teamed up with the homeowners to bring in elements that evoke the original Victorian mood of the house when it was built by local architect Adam Armstrong. One of the few remaining traces is the "270" address plate on the transom above the front door. "This was the only part of the original stained glass of the house that we could salvage," Ms. Wicks says. The balance of the stained glass windows were customcrafted by The Glass Studio.

To furnish the house, the couple turned to the internet, antique salvage shops and auctions. They found a cast iron wood-burning fireplace from England and a gilded Victorian mirror that slides to the side to expose a TV screen. The 130year-old terracotta tiles in the kitchen and the breakfast area were obtained from an exterior courtyard of a Spanish palace, while a 180-year-old parlor set was rescued from the back of a barn in Midland. The hefty interior vestibule door, originally from Romania, was purchased from salvagers in St. Jacobs.

Outside, the wrought iron fence that had been there since the '60s was in bad shape. "We studied Victorian fence designs and had a local blacksmith create one suited to the house and the area," Ms. Brouillette says. "We always smile when people ask us where we found that amount of old fence. Leaside Landscape helped us create a landscaping design of various Victorian styles. Brick pavers made the pathway lines from the front to the back of the house."

Among the blooms and bushes here are a rose garden, a perennial garden, a shade garden, a tea garden and a fernery. "We preserved some of the original plant material to help give it an immediate maturity," Ms. Brouillette points out. "A lot of the garden is still new and needs to get more established, but blooms are showing well on many plants already." Autumn is awash in colours in this garden, populated by Hydrangeas, Coneflowers, Sedum, Hibiscus, Aster and Chrysanthemum.

"This house is a labour of love," smiles Ms. Wicks. "It's been quite an adventure."

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